Notes Toward an Improbable Result: Grade Points per Pound

Inside Higher Ed has an article on grade inflation this morning, which reminds me of my improbable research theory.

Academic scolds are always talking about grade inflation, saying that the average grade years ago used to be lower than it is now. Medical scolds are always talking about the obesity epidemic, saying that average weights used to be lower than they are now.

Has anyone ever considered that the two might be related? That is, might it be that the grade points per pound has remained constant over the years?

Using some government reports on weight, and totally bias free GPA trends from gradeinflation.com, it looks like the average weight has increased by 15-17% from 1960 to the present. Meanwhile, the average GPA for public schools has increased from roughly 2.5 to roughly 3.0, an increase of 20%.

These are tantalizingly close, suggesting that perhaps the two are linked. The GPA per pound has remained constant to within 5%, well within the uncertainty in these figures, which were estimated by eye from online graphs. And that is surely enough evidence to demand a very expensive investigation into a link between high grades and obesity.

Might it be that the average weight of American students is increasing because their brains are getting huge? It might. (See also the "Flynn Effect") It would explain a lot.

If anybody wants to sling a large amount of grant money my way, I'll be happy to give this question the thorough investigation it demands.

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I think you've stumbled onto something here. It's generally acknowledged that hungry students don't learn very well. After all, it's hard to concentrate on math, literature, physics, chemistry, or just about anything else when visions of super-sized cheeseburgers and fries keep popping into your mind. This would seem to indicate that a well fed student is a better student, and the data you supply tends to back that up.

Dave

Oooh! Or it could be that college professors, who are from an older, physically smaller generation, find their MASSIVE students to be HEAD CRUSHINGLY INTIMIDATING. Hence the higher grades.

Elitism insists the better is preferable to the worse. Social engineering insists the Offically Sad deserve and receive every boon imaginable because they are Officially Sad. You can have productivity or you can have diversity. In the former grades slay the incompetent, the dysfunctional, and poltroons. In the latter, confluence of overwhelming ignorance with overweening arrogance is coin of the realm.

The choice is legislated, impressed by jackbooted State compassion redistributing earned wealth. Stop complaining about a scintilla of sequela.

And in the current school system, sedentary students are good students, working away on their homework.

Two-way causation! Theory proved!

My own theory is that we aren't seeing as much sea level rise as predicted because of all of the fish being removed from the ocean.

This is by far the most insightful analysis of grade inflation I've seen in my six years of looking at college grades. I think you're definitely onto something. Fortunately for you gradeinflation.com has a micro-research fund program - very similar to the microcredit programs that have helped untold numbers in developing nations - that is designed just for research like yours.

The maximum amount we give is one dollar. If you send me your PayPal account name and a detailed research agenda (no more than 14000 words and five figures and tables please; we get many, many applications for funding and our offices are swamped with proposals), I will gladly consider your proposal. Sincerely, Stuart Rojstaczer, gradeinflation.com

Op-Ed Columnist
âNo Picnic for Me Eitherâ
By DAVID BROOKS
The New York Times
Published: March 12, 2009

"... The problem is that as our ability to get data has improved, the education establishmentâs ability to evade the consequences of data has improved, too. Most districts donât use data to reward good teachers. States have watered down their proficiency standards so parents think their own schools are much better than they are."

"As Education Secretary Arne Duncan told me, 'Weâve seen a race to the bottom. States are lying to children. They are lying to parents. Theyâre ignoring failure, and thatâs unacceptable. We have to be fierce.'"